


the sun in the winter

by lavenderbushes



Category: Shades of Magic - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Blood, Cutting, F/M, Ritual Sacrifice, first meeting!!, holland is like. 18 in this and its Pre Trauma Holland and hes Sweet and im emotional, just canon typical White London Is Shitty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 23:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21187520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderbushes/pseuds/lavenderbushes
Summary: She had heard of him, of course. Just whispers in The Scorched Bone, mostly about how he kept to himself, how he could’ve been practically running the Kosik, maybe even king by now, and no one knew what stopped him. He didn’t even do mercenary work. The way the others told it, they made it sound like he was inwaiting,some vulture in the deep dark biding its time until it decides to feed again. The boy in front of her… well. If it weren’t for the black pouring over his left eye like ink, she’d figure he wouldn’t last to see another year living in this part of town. There was an unspoken sadness to him, a kind of vulnerability she hadn’t seen from anyone her age in a long, long time. “You don’t have to answer this if it’s too personal, but I’ve always wondered. Do you have a name?”





	the sun in the winter

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to write about holland and talya first meeting and also abt dancing rituals in wl so this happened!! the first scene was Very Much inspired by the may queen dance scene in midsommar >:) the title is from [through the ashes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed_9nLswMOI) by infinity crush! it makes me think of them a lot. anyways i get very emotional about talya and holl and how happy they cldve been if they didnt live in wl and yeah!
> 
> alternate title: talya's morosexual awakening

She was a flash of red and white skirts, weaving through bodies in the square. A hand would clasp hers, unrecognizable in the sea of movement, just to push her away to find another, catapulting them both through the living circle around and around in time to the thudding of the drums gaining momentum with them, the sharp screeches of the fiddle, the soft notes of the flute constantly calling underneath. They were the chest cavity, organs working hivemind together to achieve a function and she-  _ she  _ was the heartbeat. A smear of living, breathing red in a current of white lace. 

The music kept on getting faster as it twisted around her from all sides and she felt the tingling energy in the air grow hungry, desperate. All as one, their moves sharpened, every footfall now defined and loud and  _ there.  _ The girls she had grown up around pulled her farther into the spiral now, clawing at her sleeves, her blouse, her skin for good luck, whispering under their breath to her as she passed inches from their faces. She couldn’t make out anything but her heartbeat drumming on her temples. Her pained breaths out. The goosebumps all over her arms from the cold (the dresses she wore for rituals were always too light for Makt in any season.) There were always more hands, beckoning her deeper in until she couldn’t see the heads of the crowd watching them anymore, buried only in bodies perfectly matching her synchronicity. There were always more hands, until there weren’t. Until the drums stopped and she was in the heart of the storm.

Talya had been waiting all year for this dance.

Last solstice, she had worn white, watching in a quiet trance with all the other dancers as another girl performed the moves that had been imprinted on her heart since she could walk. Her name was Edda and she was breathtaking in crimson. Her face was stuck in deep honorific concentration even though she had been an excited giggly mess since she started practicing. Talya had counted out the steps in her mind.  _ One two three four… _ the extension of her leg, creeping out from underneath her and wrapping around the air till it was bent ever so slightly,  _ five six seven eight…  _ her arms traced over her leg mid hold, blooming as she raised them over and past her head in a weightless arc. Talya had been struck dead quiet, dead still, all the dancers were, until the last note rang out from the flute and Edda stirred from her final position, and suddenly, she wasn’t protected by ritual anymore. Her challenger could step forward.

Talya had spent the rest of that evening diluting Edda’s blood into a mixture of milk and egg, dutifully soaking her own solstice dress into it until no fold shone white as countless of generations of girls had done before her. Working her hands through the fibers of the fabric as it laid submerged in a basin of red, she had beat the color into it, trying to get the image of the girl’s twitching body on the stone floor out of her conscious. Her death had been honorable, probably one of the most important ways you could ask your life to be spent ritually, but under Talya’s fingernails, it felt all wrong and however she looked at it she still couldn’t fully hush that voice. All she had known was: in a year's time, that would not be her. No matter which dancer it would be to answer her solo, she would not fall to them. And so she had hung her still-dripping dress along the clothesline, and in the dead of night, she practiced until she couldn’t stand.

The pickup of the drum shot her back into reality.

_ One two three four… _

There was no thought in her. How could there be? Her bones wretched forward as if they were spelled, and it began. She was lost in the contorting of her limbs every which way, and it was all control, control, control coming from some part deep inside her muscle memory she couldn’t command even if she wanted to. She made fluid, beautiful lines out of rigid muscles stretched so tight as if she was turning water into wine and for once the whole wide world breathed her in. The silence when her bare feet would scrape the stone beneath her as she lunged into a leap, extending her leg into an attitude midair, the collective exhale when she came back down again, they were  _ with _ her. She wasn’t cold anymore.

And like a sweet daydream, it was over. Wind rustled through the dancers’ skirts all around her in a cold silence. The instruments were gone. And suddenly, all of the faces once hungry for her dance, to share that part of her, bled into another type of ravenous. Her body was still heaving with every breath and as she turned around herself in circles to meet the same eyes like she was expecting anything else. This was a piece of her part. But as the first girls broke the stillness and the circle began turning once more, painfully slow, winding steps, she couldn’t help but feel like she was trapped in a ring of carnivores eyeing their next blood. She’d shown them all she had teeth too, a turn of the wheel ago, and she’d prove it again and again and again if she needed to. She reached for the leather holster strapped to her ankle and drew her blade.

One came forward. Somewhere far away, Talya might have known her name, but that wasn’t who was in her skin right now and the girl before her seemed more like an illusion than flesh and blood. Nothing was real here. Her mind went to the throat, heart, lungs, liver, throat, heart, lungs, liver, repeated like it was a prayer as they circled each other, their own orbit among the footfalls of the constant turning around them. Talya thought,  _ the girl’s hand is shaking just trying to grip her hilt.  _ And then, she remembered, she didn’t have to think for this part either.

It was over quickly. Too impulsive to be anything better than desperate, she lunged at Talya, swinging blindly into the air in a long, dashing arc and just barely finding skin as Talya swung out of its path, grabbing the girl’s wrist and jutting it away to get closer as she slid her blade in between her ribcage. A breath passed, and then in a quick movement, Talya pulled her handle from her chest, yanked her hair towards the ground, and stabbed at the base of her skull with all her force to stop the pain, and the muscles, and the thinking and the everything. The girl dropped to the floor.

The circle made its final turn as eyes darted around the scene before them. They were not satisfied. There was no performance in her end. She shouldn’t have been the one to answer to her challenge, and Talya wanted to shout,  _ who convinced her? Who looked her in the eyes and told her this was how she needed to prove her worth?  _ But she was the first to approach her after the drum stopped, and so it would be honored. Talya dipped a finger in the pool of red beneath her, and dragged it all the way down her already-red chest for all to see. In a turn of a year, she will dance again. A year ago, she met these eyes around her with gleaming accomplishment, just  _ look _ at all she was capable of, so she reached deep inside for that pride again and found it barren. She felt like an executioner.

Cradling the body in her arms like she was a sleeping little sister, the circle parted for Talya as she started the walk to the fields to lay her in the middle of all that will grow and complete the cycle. 

\--

And the world rejoiced.

By the time Talya got back to the square, she had made her mind up about many things. First, she was going to get as drunk as she physically could off of other people offering her their own bottles as soon as possible. Second, she had never been more grateful for her wool stockings and too-big boots in her entire life. With the ceremony over, most of the other girls had the same idea, now wearing their shoes and shawls previously tucked away in storefronts or alleys surrounding the square. Underneath, they were still in their traditional dress, but the air of seriousness that came with that was gone and replaced by a rare kind of joy- of  _ community _ \- wherever she looked. The music was in full swing and everyone young and old danced together in the square, little repetitive movements you could learn just by watching. Ma was still home with her younger sisters (she insisted they were too young to come to the ceremony, but they had seen much worse than a single ritual sacrifice, and she knew the truth of it was Ma expected it to be her under the blade this time) but she caught sight of her older sister Kari in the clamor of it all, stumbling around with the baker’s son alongside the rest in a partner dance. 

The dread in her stomach told her she didn’t want to join in, not really, but she knew how to silence that easy. Skirting the fringes of the square, it didn’t take long for people to start recognizing her, cupping her hands in thanks one after another, handing her more  _ kaas _ than she knew what to do with. Before long, her insides started to buzz with warmth and all the sounds started to blur together, the shouts of encouragement to and from those dancing and the instruments and the meaningless talk around her. It was drowning, she thought as she walked around taking everything in, but a good kind, one that made her smile to herself from the weightlessness of it all.

Until she ran straight into a wall so hard she toppled over, knees scraping the stone below. When did a wall get there? She looked up and- no. Not a wall. Definitely a living, breathing person standing so imposing and tall he could probably kill her without a second thought. Crow’s sake. “I’m sorry,” she began, taking his outstretched hand with caution before dusting off her skirt from the fall. “I swear I’m usually not so-”

She looked up. His hair was down, masking most of his face, but she could still see one black eye underneath. Antari. She just bumped into the only Antari in the world. Fuck. “Oh.  _ Oh.”  _ Her mouth was wide open like an idiot.

Instead of looking cross, or irritated, or any of the number of expected reactions he could have, he just seemed… self-conscious? Self-conscious of the realization all over her face. His eyes went to the floor. “Please, don’t…” He looked for the words. “It was just an accident.” Gods, he looked like a lost puppy. 

She slowly processed the fact that he probably wasn’t going to spell her for nearly knocking him off balance. “So you’re- I mean-”

“Yes.”

She had heard of him, of course. Just whispers in The Scorched Bone, mostly about how he kept to himself, how he could’ve been practically running the Kosik, maybe even king by now, and no one knew what stopped him. He didn’t even do mercenary work. The way the others told it, they made it sound like he was in  _ waiting, _ some vulture in the deep dark biding its time until it decides to feed again. The boy in front of her… well. If it weren’t for the black pouring over his left eye like ink, she’d figure he wouldn’t last to see another year living in this part of town. There was an unspoken sadness to him, a kind of vulnerability she hadn’t seen from anyone her age in a long, long time. “You don’t have to answer this if it’s too personal, but I’ve always wondered. Do you have a name?”

His brow raised. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, I don’t know if you… if your  _ kind _ even have mothers or if you just. Exist. Spring up somewhere. Magic yourself into the world, or something of the like.”   


He laughed despite himself, all soft so you’d miss it if you weren’t looking for it, wrapping his arms around himself and looking off to the side. “No, we don’t just- I had a mother. I apologize if this is a disappointment, but I’m very much flesh and blood.”

“Well, you’re just one. How do you know the other Antari’s sprinkled about the worlds didn’t just crawl up from out of the dirt, or, or emerge from glowing embers, and you just were the extremely dull exception.” All from Ma’s bedtime stories, silly things she hadn’t talked about in years, and never outside her and her sisters. She definitely sounded crazy, it crossed her mind, but she had never cared about first impressions before, and didn’t know why her subconscious had suddenly started now. Around eighteen years too late for that one, Tal’s Mind. “Do you know any other Antari to prove it?”

“I can’t say I do, so. Maybe you’re right.” He still couldn’t meet her eyes. Everyone Talya met, an introduction was first and foremost a way to size you up, to look you up and down and figure how much of a shot you had if they pulled out a dagger the next second, if they could pin you and bleed you dry before you could get to your own holster. The way he fixated on everything but, it was the most naively trusting thing about him. But inexplicably to her, it was… endearing? That was it. Endearing.

She ran a finger along his cheek, guiding his eyes back to hers. “You still haven’t given me your name.”

It took him a minute to think. She smiled. “Right. Right I… it’s Holland.” 

The fiddle stirred the air around them as everyone waited with bated breath to hear what song would be next. The first couple of chords rang out and there were shouts of approval, and as she turned around she saw more and more people joining the square to participate.  _ The Final Spring.  _

She held out a hand. “Well, Holland, I’m Talya, and this is my favorite song. Would you like to dance?”

“I don’t know any of the steps,” he started, suddenly getting all stiff at her offer.

“You’ll pick it up as we go, yeah? I do this for a living, I’ll be really slow and careful the entire time, promise.”

That didn’t seem to make him less anxious in the slightest, but after a couple of seconds, he took her hand anyway. “I’m awful at dance,” he told her, barely audible as she pulled him into the sea of people taking their places with their partners all around them. 

“Sh. I’m sure you’re golden.”

\--

Holland was, in fact, awful at dance.

It seemed he was physically incapable of just relaxing and letting himself move with the music, but also was too afraid to mess up to actually use his muscle concentration to his advantage, so he spent song after song stuck in that movement purgatory with no hope of escape, looking like he was running a drill instead of dancing about flowers returning. There were a lot of stepped-on feet, near misses as Talya curled around him to get out of the way before he came forward with his left instead of his right again, endless  _ sorry _ ’s and  _ are you okay? _ ’s. She was eternally grateful at whatever god smiled on her that afternoon and made her bring her steel toe boots instead of her normal pair. 

But with all that said, it was the most simple, sweet  _ joy _ she had experienced dancing since crows know when. Executing the correct movement was something she always took with grave responsibility, it was storytelling in its own right and she felt if she got one count off, one leg wrong, she was dooming ancient voices to be misheard. With him, though, it didn’t have to be some type of undertaking, just a feeling in it’s purest form, just something fun and freeing for and for  _ once _ all the eyes didn’t have to be on her to not fuck up. 

Quickly, they both abandoned the steps entirely. She took a hold of his hips and guided him this way and that in the center of the square, dodging the others that seemed to fade away from her sight when he was the center of it. She held his arm up as tall as she can manage and had him twirl around her hand, the both of them giggling when he was too tall to make a full circle under her outstretched grip. They took each other’s forearms in their hands until they were linked and just spun around and around and around the center, her hair flying undone from her braids and her traditional crown of sticks falling forgotten to the floor, still laughing like they were the only two people in the world.

When the music steadied into something slow and most people had lost interest in dancing, they remained, his arms draped over her shoulders and her hands wrapped around the small of his back, just swaying in a steady rhythm and enjoying the feeling of having something under their touch. 

Holland broke the silence. “I saw your dance.”

“Of course you’ve seen me dance. We’ve been dancing together all evening,” she teased. She knew that wasn’t what he meant but she wanted to skirt the subject. She kind of liked how he hadn’t brought it up, hadn’t tried to congratulate her.

“I mean, before. The ceremony.” 

_ The other girls’ shaky hands. The drumming in her ears. _ She quieted her brain. It was bound to come up sometime or another. “Yes?”

“Yes. It was… I mean, a very successful show of power, and everything. Very intimidating. You obviously put a lot of work into it.”

“No.” He was trying to pay her a compliment in the most socially respectable way possible (traditional dance in their world was built around the notion of power, how they wore light fabrics to show there were no sigils on their skin because they didn’t need them, the execution of the movement itself exhibiting how they were cutthroat enough to still have control over their own bones, the physical strength involved, it went on) and she didn’t know  _ why _ she felt the need to correct herself to someone she probably wouldn’t cross paths with after tonight, but she  _ did. _ “I don’t dance for power. There was a time when I did but…” 

She looked for how to explain it right. “There’s so much we’ve forgotten, all of us. About how the world used to be. How beautiful it all once was. And I dance because it can be beautiful, and if I show people beautiful things then… maybe they’ll be able to see it. What it might’ve been like, before.” She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding in, something that hadn’t seen the light of day before clawing loose in her chest. “I want people to remember. Because, I swear, sometimes I can see it so fucking clear.”

She felt warm, calloused hands come to hold tight onto hers. Whatever she thought Holland’s reaction might’ve been, this was definitely not it. He looked at her as if she’d stirred something in him, a dormant fire in his eyes that slowly crept its way to the surface and then radiated out like it’d just been doused in gasoline. The corners of his mouth in the faintest of smiles. “Follow me,” he said.

She snorted. “I didn’t peg you to be the forward type, but-”

“I meant- ” He really couldn’t tell when she was just fucking with him in the slightest. It was adorable. “I want to show you something.”

\--

Talya mused, for a moment, that the two of them looked exactly like the cryptic figures in the dark hours of the morning she would always pass on her way to practice, huddled there saturated in the orange glow of the oil lamp she’d snagged from some porch step, in the alley in between the halfway house and the blacksmith. She took one last look this way and that into the dark streets on either side of them. “No one followed us.”  
  
Holland nodded. He beckoned her to come close and she took her spot across from him again, both of them kneeling next to the lamp in between them. His eyes watched the flames for a moment or two before looking up at her. “Were you ever told the stories of the green world?”

It’s what she grew up on. Ma used to tuck all of them in when they were little and lull them all to sleep with her soft words of other times, places bright and beautiful and alive. (Talya later found out that most people in their building labeled her as hysteric or heretical, depending on the day, but the stories were sweet in her mind all the same.) “There were shades of colors the likes we’ve never seen, greens and blues we’ll never be able to replicate. You could hear the calls of a thousand insects speaking to you through the night, see the light from a thousand stars above you,” she said, seeing it in her head vivid as a fever dream. 

The little smile was back on his face as he instinctively leaned forward to hear her better, holding onto her every last word as if he’d never heard a story in his life. Then, when she seemed like she wouldn’t say more, caught himself and straightened. He hesitated, and then nodded again, more to himself, like he was trying to decide against something, and then in one swift motion, grabbed his dagger from his belt.

That was what she gets for trusting someone. She had her hands around the hilt of her own knife in a second, lunging for his throat before- 

“Wait,” he cried out, putting a hand in between him and her encroaching form, and something in her hesitated. “Wait.” They both breathed out. “I promise I mean you no harm.”

She held the knife steady to his throat, the lamp tossed aside. “And why should I believe you?” 

He pointed to his black eye and- yeah. Fair. If he had wanted to kill her he didn’t need a blade to do it. She backed off a little, still pointing the knife to him but not as close as she was before. 

In slow movements so as, she ventured, to not surprise her again, he brought his own blade to his left palm, flinching as it met skin, and then put the dagger down and slid it on the ground away from them. She thought it fit to put her’s down as well now that he was unarmed and all, but kept it close just in case. Feeling a little self-conscious of her freak out circa ten seconds ago, she put the lamp back in place too, to see what he was doing better, because so far she was puzzled.

She had never seen magic like it. When the blood had pooled in his palm, he then grabbed a fistful of the earth underneath them (it felt more like ash, the way it stained your hands black when you touched it) and held it close to him in an almost nurturing manner,  _ _ whispering words to it like he was coaxing a child to bed instead of performing a spell. “ _ As Athera. As Athera. As Athera. _ ” It definitely wasn’t in Maktahn tongue, whatever it was.

A few moments past in dread silence, and then, out of the corner of her eye, something green. Something  _ real  _ green, not just a depiction of once was. Holland held out his hand to her as a little seedling shot out of the dirt, it’s two delicate leaves curling into life in front of her. 

It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. 

She sat there, stunned, for an eternity, all her thought gone and replaced with just  _ marveling  _ at how something so gentle and warm and  _ real  _ could ever exist here, even with Antari magic. And all at once she imagined a whole field of them, all grown up and swaying to and fro with the wind, walking amongst them and running her arms through the lush abundance of it all. She reached out to  _ touch  _ it, to touch that dream, that seedling, just for one moment, and laid a shaky finger on one of its soft baby leaves.

Immediately, it shrivelled away from her touch, until it dissolved into nothing. 

“It wasn’t you,” Holland began to say, letting the dirt fall back to the floor, rubbing his palm off on the brick wall next to them. Her finger was still frozen just where it was. It all happened so fast. “I can’t make them live any longer here even undisturbed.” It was like she was barely hearing him. She scoured her memory for images that played out just moments ago. Was it real?

“Your blood… it can do all this?” 

“Yes.” He hesitated, and then added: “I haven’t really- you’re the first person I’ve shown it to. My blood magic.” She nodded. It made sense, wanting to keep it hidden. Ever since London was aware of his existence, the boy with the black eye, there had been a price pretty much constantly over his head, from Vortalis and the other hunters. A couple of her mercenary friends had tried to get at it before, until he started fighting  _ back  _ and everyone realized just how effectively he could defend himself. The attempts somewhat died down after that. There was quiet between them. His blood snaked from his palm down his fingers, finding its way to the ground below. 

“You’re still bleeding.”

“I’ll be fine-”

“Sh. Let me see.” Hesitantly, he held out his hand for her. She took it in hers, looking at it for a second or two before decisively ripping a strip of fabric from one of her white underskirts and wrapping it around his hand, tying it together all tight when it reached its end. Crimson started peaking through the soaked cloth. Her fingers still lingered on his hand even though there was no reason now, just because she liked the way he felt. He was  _ warm.  _ He was warm and he was  _ alive  _ and that feeling under her touch was completely foreign to her, she realized. 

The spell broke, and suddenly she felt silly, sitting criss-cross in a deserted alley with a boy she just met. She stood up and offered him a hand. The sun had long set since they left the square, and what once had been loud background noise of music and shouting and movement hushed into the ever so often click clack from the boots of occasional passersby. Her fingers were still intertwined with his as she started towards the street.

But Holland didn’t budge. She looked back at him, as if to say,  _ come on, let’s get you home, it isn’t safe this late.  _ He hesitated. “I just wanted to say, what you said earlier. About showing people beautiful things. I know… I know what that  _ feels like,  _ I guess. That constant tugging on you to make anyone understand how  _ good _ things can be. That’s why I wanted to show you. I like to make people remember, too.”

Well, that did it. She shoved him against the stone wall. His breath hitched in shock and, grabbing at his shirt, she pulled him down into a kiss. He didn’t move underneath her lips, as frozen as a stone statue, and it caught her off guard. By the time she showed this much interest in a boy, they were usually putty in her hands. She pulled away. “Is this okay?”

It took him a second to speak. “Yes- yes it’s. It’s very okay. I’m sorry, it’s just that no one’s ever really… I don’t know how to.”   


She laughed all quiet and tugged him toward her again, so their faces were just inches apart. Gods, this close, he smelled like something more than ash and steel: baked bread. Morning dew after the only rain of the season. Her hand trailed up his chest and took hold of his jaw, tilting his head down to hers. “Then you wouldn’t mind if I did that again?” All too quickly, he nodded, his warm breath making opaque swirls in the night air.

And so she kissed him again. And again and again and again, until the Kosik was a world away, until he was the sun on her cold, cracked lips. 


End file.
